Touching Beauty
by sbrianson
Summary: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and tonight Sirius learns why this applies to Remus more than most. Slash.


"Touching Beauty"

Pairing: Sirius / Remus Lupin

Rating: "M" forslash and vague descriptions of homosexual acts.

DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional – that's F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It never happened, and is not real. It is the product of my own imagination. It contains descriptions of male slash (that's male/male homosexual relations). If you do not like this type of content, or if you find homosexuality or its practice offensive, please click the "Back" button or close your Internet browser NOW, and do not read any further. All characters and copyrights are owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers™ (AOL Time Warner), but this story is owned by me and is all my own work.

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Bright, silvery light reaches through the window beside my bed – _our_ bed – casting us in a resplendent, pale white glow as the stars and moon shine down on us from the early morning sky. And finally I get some idea as to why Remus and Peter believe in that God of theirs, as I lie back and feel more joy in my heart than I've ever felt before. Of course, this period after making love always feels as if I've just taken a Euphoria Draft, but this time, it is different.

We've had sex before, over the last two months, but never like this…

Tonight was the first time I have ever seen Remus naked.

From our very first night in Hogwarts, I had never seen the point of hiding myself away. After all, we share a dormitory, and we are all boys, so on my first night, the trousers and pants came down, the pyjamas went up. Enough said. James followed suit the next night, and even Peter was walking around starkers by the end of September. But Remus always chose to hide behind the curtains, even when all he was doing was changing his school shirt.

When it transpired that he was a werewolf, I thought that that would be the end of it; after all, we all knew that he would have, well… _scarring_… but still Remus's strict policy of extreme modesty continued. Nobody mentioned anything, but I thought that this was a little bit odd. Especially now, at the age of seventeen, he still hides away like a little child if the remotest part of his body will be exposed.

Still, when we first got together, I expected no less. But when we started having sex, I thought that Remus would be almost _forced_ to strip and let me see him undressed. But Mr. Lupin is a crafty little devil… we always made love in the dark and under the covers of my bed, him still wearing his pyjamas. After all, all he needed to do was to pull his necessary bits out of his flies.

But tonight was different. Tonight, I found him waiting for me as usual, under the covers, but this time his pyjamas were nowhere to be seen. He was waiting for me, naked.

It was ecstasy. It was bliss. Remus putting my hands on him, on his scars, on _the_ scar… wanting me to explore the dead, scaly skin which covered his arms and torso and back and legs, all the time moaning and writhing around beneath me, as if he has longed and wished and _craved_ to be touched…

To be touched by me…

The sex itself was heavenly. No cliché in the world could do justice to how I felt, when Remus slid himself inside me and filled me. How he moved inside me, every stroke, and every buck of his hips brought us slowly, deliciously, closer to the point where nothing else exists besides the two of us, joined as lovers, and we feel better than anyone in the world could possibly feel in any other situation. And I feel... I feel as if I am reaching out, up to the night sky itself, and feeling its splendour radiate through me.

Feeling the clouds...

Caressing the moon...

Touching the stars…

Softly…

touching…

_beauty_…

My Remus lies curled up next to me, and although the curtains are tightly drawn, my bedcovers are not. They lie, discarded, on the floor. It is a warm night, and we bask in the warmth of each other's bodies. We share a cigarette and a secret dream, arms and legs tangled and sprawled every whichway, neither owner caring that he is slowly losing the feeling in his leg because the other's body lies on top of it. Kisses laced with the aroma that taste bittersweet and dear, as we spend more time with tongues in each other's mouths than the cigarette which burns brightly in the starlit darkness. It burns as our passion for each other burns, and the grey smoke billows around us, incensing our bodies with affection.

Remus has given himself to me more completely than he has ever done before. He has given me his love in the form of the act we have just performed. He has given me his seed in the conclusion of that act. And he has given be his body, in its full, unsheathed glory.

He has given me his absolute trust, a gift more rare than any other that I have ever known.

Remus falls asleep, curled into a foetal ball, his head nuzzling my neck and chest, leaving me alone with my thoughts and his body. And I look down over his mottled, slashed skin and see how Remus would want to hide it away, because it dawns on me how so many people would shudder and look away in disgust and revulsion at the pale white welts that mark him out for what he is, for his curse. So many people would see pure horror in those scars.

But all I see is beauty.

I reach down to his left calf and run my fingers lightly over the first scar, the infecting, poisoning site. It is raised higher than the others yet seems so much deeper. It is red and circular, with individual dentition just barely noticeable. Remus shifts in his slumber and seems to raise his leg towards me as his lips bend and flicker into a soft smile. My fingers cannot let it go – they refuse to leave the confines of the jaw-shaped welt as they trace and palpate its terrifying beauty.

I feel all my thoughts focus on him and his happiness. I feel my breathing slow and match his own. I feel my heart jolt and beat and writhe to almost a new rhythm – _Remus's_ rhythm – and electric tingles from the tip of my penis as it pulses and relaxes, resting against his on the moonlit bed, genitor-groinal pulses in perfect syncopation with each other.

I feel myself fall in love.

For Remus is so very beautiful yet doesn't feel it. He has felt ashamed of his scars and scratches, felt ugly, and repulsive; that he should hide them away. Because he doesn't understand that he is beautiful.

Because he is beautiful to me.

Sleep will not vanquish me tonight. I do not want it to. I will not allow it to. For if I sleep, it will stop me looking at him. I want to spend the rest of my days like this; gazing at the body of my love and lover. I want to spend forever with him in my arms, so that this afterglow can never, ever end. And although I don't want this moment to pass, I know that sooner or later it must end. And when it does, I want Remus to walk out of here as he is. Happy, confident, smiling… _naked_…

Because I want the others to see how beautiful Remus is, too.


End file.
